News that the Cape Wind project off of Massachusetts’ shores is officially dead is unfortunate. However, as MassLive reports, other projects that aren’t visible to the homes of the stupidly rich stand much better chances of moving forward.
Opponents of the wind farm, which united members of both the Kennedy and Koch families, weren’t ready to sacrifice their ocean views for a little thing like saving the world. Their self-interested anti-wind campaigning is hardly unique. It’s been obvious for years now that fossil fuel money supports anti-wind advocacy campaigns. One of their main lines of attack are spreading information about the supposed health impacts of turbines, through public events or writings and videos that warn of a range of health threats.
But are those warnings valid? It may surprise you to hear that they are, in fact, a load of nonsense.
That’s the short version of a new book from a group of Australian researchers published by the Sydney University Press, Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease (available as a free pdf here), that details the history of wind turbine sickness. Turns out this constellation of some 247 ailments are only a problem for areas where anti-wind groups have fear-mongered.
An (abridged!) list of supposedly wind-farm-induced problems: accelerated ageing, bovine birth defects, cataracts, cold sores (yes, turbines cause herpes!), diabetes, diarrhea, dream disturbances, dry eyes, fever, forgetfulness, hallucinations, hip pain, infertility, loss of libido, lung cancer, lupus, multiple sclerosis, panic attacks, shoulder pain, loose stools, varicose veins, vertigo, blurred vision, vomiting blood, both weight loss and weight gain, and, finally, yawning.
These wide-ranging problems are deemed a “communicated illness,” the authors explain, in that only people warned of these illnesses seem to contract them. Live near a wind farm but aren’t subjected to anti-wind advocacy campaigns waged by the Kochs or their Australian counterparts? Then you’re probably immune.
The book’s lead author Simon Chapman summarized his findings in an op-ed in the Guardian that lays out some rather amusing aspects of the anti-wind bluster. For example, despite the presence of wind farms around the world, health complaints about wind energy come almost exclusively from English-speaking countries. On top of that, wind farms targeted by groups opposed to turbines account for the vast majority of complaints, with a whopping 74% of Australian complaints coming from just six farms.
Chapman and his co-authors explain that the anti-wind farm agitators are the vectors by which the supposed wind sicknesses spread. As for the symptoms (which people probably do actually feel, a reverse placebo effect known as “nocebo”), the anti-wind lobby concentrates on spreading “information” about ailments that happen to look a lot like garden-variety anxiety and normal aches and pains. The end result is that people then associate normal annoyances with the wind turbines, and falsely attribute the maladies to the turbines. According to Chapman, people have, in some cases, even reported symptoms when the turbines weren’t operating.
The Wind may cry Mary, but those anti-wind agitators claiming turbines hurt health? They’re just crying wolf.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: